Black Workers Faced Noose, Racism At Berkeley Workplace: Lawsuit

BERKELEY, NJ — A Black man who took a photo of a noose hanging from a loading dock at his Berkeley workplace was fired shortly after, a federal lawsuit claims. Four Black men who formerly worked for Empire Blended Products Inc. alleged that the company displayed a pattern of racist harassment and discrimination.

The cement company identified the white employee who created and hung the noose and suspended him for one week, the lawsuit claims.

Empire Blended Products Inc., president and principal owner Jay Gornitzky, and other individuals whose names and roles are not yet known were sued.

The lawsuit claims that employees called the plaintiffs the n-word and other racist terms on multiple occasions. A supervisor identified in the lawsuit as "Marco" laughed when the Black employees told him, according to the lawsuit.

Gornitzky declined comment to Patch because "it's still pending litigation," he said.

The discrimination culminated in the placement of a hangman's noose in the workplace, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Trenton, shows the alleged picture of the noose.

One employee returned to work Sept. 5 from his lunch break to find the noose hanging from the loading dock door in the warehouse — the lawsuit contains a picture.

The noose had 13 knots, which he knew to be a hangman's noose, according to the lawsuit. The knot often connotes the lynchings of Black people from throughout American history.

The employee found several coworkers joking about the noose and taking photos, the lawsuit says. He spoke with two of the other plaintiffs about the noose, and one employee showed Marco a photo of the noose, according to the document.

The worker performed his job for the rest of the day but "could not return to the workplace again due to his extreme emotional distress caused by the discrimination in general and the noose in particular," the lawsuit said.

He was called to the manager's office Sept. 6, where Gornitzky and the office manager told him he was fired, the lawsuit says.

"Defendant Gornitzky and his office manager stated that Plaintiff Mosley had been terminated because he had taken a photo of the noose and showed it to other employees including his manager Marco, which they called an 'attempt to create conflict in the workplace,'" the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit claims Gornitzky sent a memo to all employees Sept. 6 that said the following: "We understand that what took place looked offensive to some. ... Empire Blended apologizes to anyone who took offense yesterday."

The other three Black employees mentioned in the lawsuit quit Empire Blended Products Inc. because the company "knowingly permitted conditions of discrimination in employment so intolerable that a reasonable African American person subject to them would resign."

The plaintiff's attorneys filed the lawsuit July 17. They seek unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

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